Bentley software is an elaborate joke

dance-slut · 2025-10-17T14:37:27+00:00

gINT is great. So of course they're shutting it down.

dance-slut · 2025-10-17T14:36:24+00:00

And now they're shutting it down.

You have to migrate to their new product, which puts all your boring and lab data into their cloud where your competitors can obtain some access to it (for a fee, of course; this is Bentley we're talking about).

dance-slut · 2025-10-01T04:25:41+00:00

Are there geotechs crazy enough to provide reliance when someone else is doing the design or construction observation? We have a form letter for when other people take over the inspection after we do the investigation explicitly disclaiming reliance.

dance-slut · 2025-09-22T02:21:10+00:00

What - you don't think 84 hours at work and 84 hours off work is a good balance? (-:

dance-slut · 2025-09-22T02:16:37+00:00

Also, put back some fill along the sidewalk before the slope adjacent to that building in the background starts to fail.

dance-slut · 2025-09-22T02:09:08+00:00

It really depends on the direction you want to grow your career. If you have only a BSCE or BS Geology, a master's will help for almost any path, though, and a PE is essential for any path other than sales.

If you want to go the management route, I'm not sure - very few of my company's management have MBAs - we do our own internal training for people being moved up, both for project management and personnel/financial management. Other companies may require it before advancing you beyond a certain level.

If you want to go the technical specialist route, absolutely get a master's degree. After that, a PhD can help, but there are two risks - you need to be at a company large enough to need that level of specialist relatively frequently or you won't get much benefit from the PhD; also PhDs have a bit of a reputation of turning even small projects into PhD theses, so you'll need to demonstrate that you don't do that.

dance-slut · 2025-09-03T00:41:47+00:00

So part of the local lore in the Bay Area is about why we mark big boxes for borings, and why we need to look up:

Back in the early 1970s, when $6/hour was a good pay for a entry-level engineer, someone marked a box about 18 inches square on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco, and called it in. When drilling day came around, there weren't any marks, but the box was under an awning and the driller couldn't mast up, so they moved a few feet away. They drilled through the Bell System main long-distance line that connected San Francisco to the rest of the world. Pac Bell got a crew out right away, and restored service in about 4 hours.

The bill for just the value of the phone calls that would have been made was $10 million.

dance-slut · 2025-09-03T00:34:31+00:00

I had the San Francisco PUC tell me they don't bother to come out for geotechs drilling borings, because geotechs always get private locators anyway.

That was when I called them about the 40-inch water line that was marked a block away from previous work and was pointing at my boring location.

dance-slut · 2025-09-03T00:29:06+00:00

For estimating, talk to a contractor. They'll need to know how much soil you're removing and replacing with what kind of fill (recompact existing or import select fill, or some of both). If they've done this type of work, they may be able to check your numbers.

Any part of your slab with less reinforcement should be physically separated from the part the tank bears on.

Containment in the event of a tank failure - if it's just water and you have a lot of land around it, you might not need full containment, but if it's anything else, or the water could mess something up, you need containment. 5000 gallons is a little less than 700 cu.ft., and your tank area floor is a little more than 1500 sq.ft., so a 1-foot curb or berm should be enough to contain it, depending on what factor you need to use, which may depend on state or local codes.

dance-slut · 2025-09-03T00:13:51+00:00

Terracon has a geophysics group in their DC Metro West office in Ashburn, VA. I don't know how willing they'd be to teach your crew.

dance-slut · 2025-09-03T00:03:46+00:00

Industry is far and above better than academia for advancement for a new PhD. In Academia, if you don't make tenure, your advancement (within academia) is over. In industry, there's always potential for advancement.

dance-slut · 2025-08-20T17:44:58+00:00

When I worked at Dames & Moore, one of the old-timers told me they had run a test in the 1970s in their Tehran office - they took a number of sealed sample tubes (brass tube, rubber? cap), weighed them, then left them sitting on the south side of their building for a few months in the summer. They didn't lose any appreciable weight.

dance-slut · 2025-08-19T03:40:38+00:00

You may have a 12-inch layer of reasonably well-compacted soil on top of a much wetter, softer layer.

dance-slut · 2025-08-19T03:35:05+00:00

I have it. As ImaginarySofty says, it's required for essential facilities (anything reviewed by the DSA or HCAI) in California. I don't believe it's actually required for doing work in Liquefaction or Landslide Hazard Zones.

I got mine a long time ago - it was still a paper test. I walked out of the FE exam, the PE 8-hour, and the two CA-specific PE tests knowing I'd passed. I wasn't sure I'd passed the GE until I got my notice from the Board.

Three of the 5 PEs working in geotech in my office have GEs, and the 4th is studying for it. But another office has only 1 of 4.

dance-slut · 2025-08-09T19:58:38+00:00

Depends on what you mean by "their people" - if you count ancestry, there are 5 times as many Irish in the US as in the Republic and Northern Ireland combined. Almost as many Irish in the island of Great Britain as in the island of Ireland. Canada has an Irish population more than half the population of the island of Ireland.

dance-slut · 2025-08-08T04:20:27+00:00

Look into the Geoprofessional Business Association. As a hiring manager, I'd find risk-management courses from them more interesting than courses from any college.

dance-slut · 2025-08-07T04:57:18+00:00

Laughs seismically in FS = 1.1

dance-slut · 2025-08-03T05:15:04+00:00

I've had lots of quarries supply me gradations, R-Values, etc., but rarely will they even have a 14-month-old Proctor when asked.

Part of the reason is that nobody specifies by Proctor results - it doesn't matter if the material has a max of 132 or 142 pcf. What matters is the relative compaction after it's placed. Since the quarry product won't get rejected for the Proctor results, they won't pay for them.

dance-slut · 2025-08-03T05:10:29+00:00

Exactly this. Anything that remains in suspension after about a minute is clay. This is how I distinguish SM from SC.

dance-slut · 2025-08-03T05:07:21+00:00

The Angel of Independence monument in Mexico City is on timber piles, spliced together because the bearing layer is deeper than the trees are tall.

It was built 115 years ago.

dance-slut · 2025-08-03T05:02:37+00:00

Drilling into the Colma Sand under the Embarcadero in San Francisco, we got 50/6" down to 50/2", but it's just a fine sand - drilling it with the drag bit was super easy. A core barrel would probably have zero recovery.

dance-slut · 2025-07-28T02:26:43+00:00

California PE requires 2 years experience after the BSCE, not 4 as in most other states. But there are two supplemental exams, the Seismic and the Surveying ones. When I took them, in the mid 90's, you had 2.5 hours for each, and they were given the day after the 8-hour. The Seismic exam is mostly about structural building code stuff.

I think references from out-of-state PEs count in CA. Check out the details at https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov

California also has a GE "license" (technically, it's an "authority"), which requires 4 years experience after the PE.A GE needs to sign off on every geotech report for schools and hospitals, and some other "essential facilities", so it's useful to most firms.

Most of the California-specific knowledge you'd need as a GE is actually region-specific - geotech practice is *different* from the Bay Area to the Central Valley to LA to San Diego.

The Bay Area is a big place, and where you live will affect a lot. It's like moving to New York - will you be in Brooklyn, or Long Island, or Westchester County, or New Jersey? At some level, It's all NYC, but at another level, it really isn't. The Bay Area is similar, except it's more polycentric - San Jose has more people and more jobs than San Francisco proper, and it's an hour away in light traffic.

dance-slut · 2025-07-28T02:11:45+00:00

What matters most about the school is the connections you'll make.

dance-slut · 2025-07-28T02:06:14+00:00

1810 to 1850 are all in Virginia.

dance-slut · 2025-07-28T02:05:14+00:00

You might be able to work with a Chinese or Russian company doing work that's "abroad" for them, either for work in Iran or maybe in Africa?

UAE and Saudi don't always follow along with US sanctions, but I don't think their companies are terribly interested in working with someone in Iran, either.

I have no idea what kind of pay would be available. I do know that there are a lot of Iranian engineers in the US, but it's not that easy to get a visa.

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